


no capes (and no medals either)

by nymphae



Series: the hundred [8]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Lots of Angst, dramatic crime fighting, more like doctor/superhero AU, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:38:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4002721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphae/pseuds/nymphae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They look at each other in silence. He must look like crap. The bruises from old fights haven’t even faded yet, and already new ones are overlaying them. She, on the other hand, is the best thing he’s seen all week, even with his blood on her hands. (In times like this, he thinks getting beaten half to death isn’t <i>so</i> bad.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	no capes (and no medals either)

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of inspired by Netflix's Daredevil (it's obvious and I'm not that sorry). I watched it twice within the first month of its release and I'm planning to watch it again. Not everyone's got superpowers, just so you know. I'll add a list of supers/aliases/abilities down in the end notes for reference.
> 
> (Warning: beware of the major death. Advice: listen to "Tyrants" by Catfish and the Bottlemen.)

It’s well past three in the morning when he collapses onto the fire escape, vision blurring around the edges. He hasn’t had time to assess the nature of his injuries, but he knows he’s in deep shit. A few ribs, a couple of fingers, a lot of blood. This is just about the last place he wanted to end up tonight, but that’s life. _Life as you choose it, idiot,_ his sister would say.

He wouldn’t have a response to that.

His blood smears over the metal rails when he pulls himself up, dark and thick. He rests there for a moment, wills the drum of his heart to quiet because he can’t hear his own movements over the thumping in his ears. The neighbors can’t know he’s here. He manages to drop one more level without too much ruckus, almost passes out. He leans his forehead against the cold glass of her window and closes his eyes.

 

When he wakes up he’s gasping.

A warm hand presses down on his chest, another to his neck. He grabs them, instinctually prepared to break bones, but they’re empty and harmless. “Breathe,” urges a soft voice. “It’s okay. You’re safe. _Breathe_.”

He breathes, aware of the unsteady pain in his ribs and the taste of blood in his mouth. When the panic clears, he finds himself looking into a familiar face.

Clarke Griffin raises one corner of her mouth, her eyes glinting in the dark. “Hi, stranger.”

“Hi,” he rasps. He tries to sit up, but she flattens her hand to his chest and pushes him back down.

“You really fucked yourself up this time,” she says, disapproval strong in her tone. “You’ll be out of commission for a while.”

“We’ll see about that,” he says, but she doesn’t smile.

She shakes her head. “You’re a real mess, you know that?” She gets up abruptly, bunching up bloody rags and bandages in her hands.

He says nothing in reply. He’s lying on her floor instead of the couch, out of sight of the windows. She would’ve had to drag him in through the fire escape and across the room, which can’t have been easy. She’s significantly smaller than him, and he would’ve been over a hundred pounds of dead weight.

He knows, without either of them having to say it, that he can’t keep doing this. He sits up, biting back the groan that almost slips between his teeth.

From the kitchen Clarke shoots him a poisonous glare. “Who was it this time?” she asks as she pads back. He sighs, but she just keeps pressing. “The mob? The cops? A mugger who just happened to piss you off?”

He says, “You think I can’t take a mugger? I’m hurt, doc.”

She doesn’t laugh. “You need to be careful,” she says at length.

“No one saw me come here.”

She presses her lips together, brow scrunching. “That’s not what I mean.”

They look at each other in silence. He must look like crap. The bruises from old fights haven’t even faded yet, and already new ones are overlaying them. His lip’s busted and he’s pretty sure that the stinging above his eye means the knife caught him there. She, on the other hand, is the best thing he’s seen all week, even with his blood on her hands. She’s barefoot and bare-legged, the dim light turning her hair muted yellow. (In times like this, he thinks getting beaten half to death isn’t _so_ bad.)

She sighs at last, places a glass of water and a bottle of pills on the coffee table. “You can stay here tonight,” she says wearily. “I have to be at the hospital in two hours anyway, so you don’t have to sneak out. Just…sleep in, okay?”

He just looks at her in silence, watches her turn for her bedroom. The concern in her eyes just confirms it for him: he’s made a grave mistake coming here again. “Clarke,” he says. She turns back, tiredness suddenly evident in the slump of her shoulders. “Thank you.”

She says, “Are you going to tell me your name this time?”

He shakes his head. “The less you know—”

She interrupts him irritably. “Yeah, I know.” She shuts the door. He waits until she’s asleep before climbing out her window.

 

Clarke Griffin is many things, but she is not stupid. She has played her entire life sensibly, practically. Went to med school because it would support her. Kept in touch with her mother because she would regret it if she didn’t. Swore off dating because it would give her one less thing to cry about. She has rarely ever made a move without thinking it through first.

Saving the man in the mask—the first time—was not an act of practicality but an act of rebelliousness. (If she’s being nice to herself she may call it an act of goodness, but _good_ is also on the list of things Clarke Griffin is not, so.) Saving him the third time and the fourth time and all the times after, however, were arguable acts of recklessness. It is never a good thing to fall in with vigilantes. On the scale of occupations, they’re right next to criminals. But every time he comes, bleeding and broken, she fixes him. And, at his request, she doesn’t tell anyone.

Her mother would call that stupidity. Clarke resents that hypothetical on principle.

Anyhow, she’s not unintelligent or unobservant. She has noticed her life getting a little bit easier. The guy who used to leer at her on the corner every morning now drops his gaze in fear. The locks on her front door became brand-spanking-new over a 36-hour shift. The faucet in the kitchen stopped dripping. She wonders if that’ll all go away when the masked man stops coming. She wonders if she’ll ever be able to stop thinking of him as _the masked man_ , and if she’ll ever know him by his real name and not the one she gave him.

(After she’d asked for it the third time, he’d said, “Pick one.”

“What?”

“A name,” he replied. He’d had his eyes closed, a purplish-yellow bruise ringing his left one and a horizontal cut marking the bridge of his nose. His blood was still on her hands. “One you like.”

She thought about it. “Bruce,” she said after a moment.

There was mild surprise on his face and in his voice. “Like…Wayne?”

“He was a vigilante, too.”

The man in the mask thought this over. This was the first time the word _vigilante_ had ever hung between them. “I don’t have billions of dollars, an arsenal, or a god complex,” he said.

“Don’t you?” she asked. “Have a god complex, I mean.” When he didn’t reply she sighed, thought some more. “Well, I’m not calling you Clark. That’s just confusing.”

He’d opened his eyes, turned to fix her with a dark stare. “I’m not a superhero, Miss Griffin.”

The firmness in the words made her stiffen. “I know that,” she said, but in reality she wasn’t so sure. She’d seen the reports on the news. If he wasn’t a hero, he certainly wasn’t trying to prove it out on the streets. She changed the subject. “How about Peter?”

“Peter,” he repeated. “A disciple of Christ. He denied him three times.”

This surprised her. “Are you religious?”

He gave a huff that might have, once upon a time, been a laugh. “No.” He closed his eyes again.

She racks her brain. “Jason?”

There is a long silence. Then, finally, “Jason it is.”)

Yeah, not likely.

She goes in to work heavy-lidded and turns her thoughts to pale scrubs, fluorescent lights, and vending machines. It doesn’t really work. Anya takes one look at her in the break room and says, “What’s their name?”

Clarke blinks at her over the edge of her coffee cup. Anya is one of those rare people who actually looks good when she’s tired. There’s something about her dark circles that accents her very high cheekbones, the intensity of her eyes. She’d once been asked out by six patients in a row—and she’d been awake for something like 48 hours. Clarke is secretly jealous and not a little suspicious that her coworker is inhuman. “What?” she says, after a beat.

“The girl,” Anya says, with a wry smile. “Or guy. Whoever you’re seeing.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I’m not seeing anyone.”

Anya raises an eyebrow, thumps her spoon against the bottom of her yogurt cup. “Right,” she says. “Just like you _weren’t_ seeing that orthopedic nurse in every on-call room on the third floor.”

Clarke’s eyes flick to Lexa, only three tables away, and flushes. “I’m not seeing anyone,” she repeats.

“Uh-huh,” Anya says. She lets it go. Talk turns to urine samples and Mrs. O’Reilly’s gastroscopy but Clarke’s brain sticks to something else.

 

Despite his best attempts, he ends up at Clarke’s again only a week later.

He hisses, and she clicks her tongue. “Stop moving,” she orders. “God, you burn through meds faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s the super blood,” he mutters, but he stays still until she finishes up. “Done?”

“No,” she replies. “Don’t think I missed the blood in your hair. You might have a concussion.” She sits beside him and holds up her hands.

He leans away from her. “I don’t have a concussion.”

She gives him a dubious look. “How would you know? I’m the doctor.”

“I’ve had them before.” He pauses. “Doctor,” he adds.

She sighs. “I expected nothing less.” But when she holds out her hands, he doesn’t move away from them. She examines his scalp gently, with strong fingers. Hands made for surgery. “You always show up here at the asscrack of dawn. What would you do if I were with someone?”

“You never are.”

“But what if I was?”

His head is tilted down, so he’s looking at her lap. “Are you trying to tell me you have a boyfriend?”

Her hands vanish suddenly, and he looks up. She’s a lot closer than he thought. Her perfume fills the small space between them. Her eyes are _so_ blue. “I’m trying to tell you that I don’t,” she says, and then she kisses him.

He kisses back like the idiot he is before sense returns to him. He jerks away. “Don’t do that,” he says.

She doesn’t look hurt. She says, “Why not? You haven’t wanted to?”

He hopes the answer isn’t written all over his face. “I should go,” he says, when he should have told her _no_. He gets up, limps over to the window. He’ll be stronger this time. He won’t come again.

 

He returns to his apartment on unsteady legs, a little cleaner and a little less pained, to find his sister waiting for him.

“Where were you?” she asks, as usual without preamble or pause. Never mind he’s broken and bleeding; but then again, it’s always been all about Octavia.

“What are you doing here?” he counters. It’s been months since he’s seen her. Eight, maybe nine. He hadn’t expected to see her for even longer, but here she is, already undoing the work he put in to remove the traces of her presence—duffel by the door, blanket bunched up at the end of the couch, a teenager-aimed show gracing the television, peanut butter and jelly jars left open on the table. She herself is seated on the counter, eating.

She gives a noncommittal shrug. “Nate called,” she says simply, and he silently curses his best friend.

“How did you get in here?”

“I picked the lock.”

‘Since when do you pick locks?”

“Since four hours ago.”

Sometimes he really, really hates his sister’s ability.

“Where were you?” she repeats.

He throws his backpack onto the counter, winces with the movement. “Your first question isn’t ‘why are you bleeding?’”

“No,” Octavia replies coolly around a mouthful of sandwich. She swallows and says, “I noted it and assumed you did something stupid.” She eyes him, and he’s forgotten that she has their mother’s eyes copied exactly into her face. “Which leads me to my second question: what stupid thing did you do?”

He hobbles into the living room and sits gingerly on the couch with a groan. “Fought crime. Warred with evil. Battled my internal morals and my conscience.”

A newspaper falls into his lap with a slap. The headline reads, _VIGILANTE STRIKES AGAIN. POLICE HAVE NO LEADS_. A blurry photo follows. “They’re thinking of calling you Silvertongue,” Octavia says, an eyeroll heavy in her voice.

“Better than Mimic,” he bites back. He realizes, in the silence that follows, he’s just betrayed the fact that he’s been checking up on her, following her through newsprint and websites. Chicago can’t decide whether it hates her or loves her. (He’s not so indecisive.)

However, she doesn’t comment, opting instead for a noise of distaste. “Nothing’s better than Mimic.” She sits on the coffee table, her knee bumping his. _She looks good_ , he thinks. All the baby fat he’d been imagining her with is gone, along with the naivety and false hopes. She’s packed in tougher now, could probably take him in a real fight. Baby sister no longer. “What’s really going on?” she asks. “Nate’s worried.”

He says nothing.

“Gang war?” she presses. “Cops?”

It weights on his shoulders, on his heart. He imagines himself sinking into the cushions. “I just want to sleep,” he says. He closes his eyes. “Please, please just let me sleep, O.”

His sister’s eyes grow soft. “Okay,” she says quietly.

He lies flat, puts his aching head on the coarse cushions. He feels the weight of a blanket settling over him, and then nothing. He sleeps, fitfully and dreamlessly.

When he wakes again, light is filtering in through the windows and the room is empty. A glass of water and an aspirin bottle are staring at him from the coffee table. He downs some of both.

He reeks like sweat and blood and the gloves Clarke uses, but he can’t shower without hurting himself. (This he knows from experience and a sneaking suspicion that the universe hates him.) Instead he does his best to bathe without it, using rags. It doesn’t make him feel any cleaner.

He’s opening the fridge when Octavia comes clomping through the front door, laden down with paper bags.

“I brought you some lunch,” she says.

He shuts the fridge. “Thanks.” But he doesn’t touch the bags when she puts them on the table. Silence hangs between them for a minute. He doesn’t like the way she’s looking at him. “How much did Nate tell you?”

“Not much,” his sister replies. “But you already know that.”

Relief spreads over him. Of course. Nate hardly ever did anything without Bellamy’s okay. (Except call her, but he can’t find the energy to be angry about that.) “Then you should go,” Bellamy says. “Chi-Town needs you.”

Her eyes narrow by a fraction. “It doesn’t, actually,” she says coolly. “I left it with a friend.”

He just looks at her.

Octavia shifts from foot to foot, her indifferent façade slipping to reveal a smaller girl, one that’s uncomfortable in her own home. “Okay,” she says. He’s picturing 1999, picturing Hello Kitty pajamas and cereal on the floor. “You don’t want me here. I skipped out on you, and I’m sorry about that. But you’re killing yourself here.”

“I’m not—”

“No, Bell,” she snaps. “You’re _killing yourself_ for this, and you need my help. I don’t care how big it is or what you’ve done. It’s my turn to take care of us. My brother, my responsibility.” She’s glaring now. She’s good at it. “Okay?”

He curls his hands around the back of the nearest chair, more for support than anything else. “Okay,” he says.

For the first time in their lives, he tells her everything.

 

It’s been three weeks since Clarke last saw the masked man. Jason. The newspapers call him Silvertongue, but that sounds less appropriate to her than Jason does. His endless string of rescues flits through her ER singing his praises. More troubling, though, are their descriptions of his power.

“He can make you do _anything_ ,” says one witness, wide-eyed and breathless. He saved her from an apartment fire, along with her baby boy. “It’s like—like hypnosis.”

“You want to do it,” says a second, a gawky boy who works in a jewelry shop. He coughs awkwardly. “You _want_ to please him. It’s weird.”

The words settle uncomfortably in Clarke’s stomach. She wonders if, for the past few months, she’s been under his influence. It doesn’t stop her from looking for him.

“Supers are batshit crazy,” says Raven when she sees Clarke reading yet another article on the masked man. She is the only closeted super that Clarke knows. Her leg sits stiffly on its designated chair; it hasn’t deterred her from being the best damn scrub nurse in the department. “There’s a reason we have laws.”

“The law isn’t always enough,” Clarke replies. She flushes under Raven’s incredulous look. “I mean—the system doesn’t always work, Rae.”

“Sure,” Raven says after a moment. She’s looking at Clarke differently, scrutinizing her. Clarke used to be afraid of her, especially after finding out they were dating the same guy a year and a half ago. Even after becoming friends, Raven’s gaze is still sharp on her. “But that sure as shit doesn’t give people the right to operate outside of it.” She hits something on the keyboard several times, and the surgery schedule blinks at her. “I don’t care what kind of powers they’ve got.”

They lapse into silence. Raven returns to the computer. Clarke returns to her article.

 

In the dead of night, she startles awake to the sound of glass shattering. She’ll think, later, how interesting it is that her thoughts went immediately to _Jason_ instead of _burglar._ When she comes running from her bedroom, though, there are twice as many people as she expected collapsing into her living room.

She recognizes Jason immediately; he doesn’t seem to be moving. The other person is a woman, a mask of paint smeared over the upper part of her face. “You’re Clarke?” she demands. She’s sopping wet—it’s raining outside, sheets of water covering the layer of glass on her floor.

Clarke stares. “You owe me a window,” she says stupidly.

The woman’s voice turns harsh. “Are you Clarke Griffin?”

Clarke snaps into full consciousness. “Yes,” she blurts.

“What are you waiting for?” the woman snaps. She seems to be bleeding, too, but she gestures to the prone figure beside her. _“Save him.”_

Clarke jolts into action. Together they drag him out of the rain and the sights of the window. The woman helps Clarke cut away his clothes and assess the damage, which is—a lot. She follows Clarke’s instructions silently and well.

The woman, as it turns out, is really more of a girl. With the face paint smearing away, she looks closer to teens than twenties. She watches Clarke’s working hands with the hawk-like intensity of a mother, then picks up the suture kit and sews herself up with the expertise of a surgeon.

She gives a grimace-like grin when Clarke gapes at her. “I can do anything if I see it once,” she explains. “Handy, huh?” There is more bitterness than amusement in her tone. Stunned, Clarke returns to her work.

“Okay,” Clarke says at last. It’s been maybe an hour and a half. She’ll be lucky to get this blood off the floor. “He’s stable. This is the best I can do without a hospital.” She doesn’t ask for one. She knows the drill.

The girl looks at her appreciatively. “He said you were good,” she says.

This startles Clarke. “He did?”

The girl snorts. “You’d have to be,” she says dismissively. “All the crap he gets into?”

They both watch his labored breathing for a minute, the blonde still on her knees, the brunette perched on the couch’s arm.

“Thank you,” the girl says suddenly. “He probably doesn’t say that enough.”

“No problem,” Clarke mutters. She gets up, stripping her gloves away, and goes to scrub her hands hard enough that her skin smarts. When she comes back the glittery shards of glass are gone, and so is the blood. The girl brushes a few fingers over Jason’s forehead so lovingly that Clarke feels like she doesn’t belong in her own living room.

“It’s best that he stays here a few days,” the girl tells Clarke, who didn’t think she even registered her presence. “It’s not safe for him back home.”

“Why?” Clarke dares to ask.

Predictably, the girl meets her question with silence. At least Clarke doesn’t have to hear the words _the less you know, the better._

“Okay,” she says lamely. She hesitates, then asks, “What’s his name?”

The girl’s hand drops to her side, and she gives a shake of her head. “Not mine to share, Doctor.” She pauses. “But mine is Octavia.”

Clarke frowns. “Why are you telling me?”

“He trusts you some,” Octavia replies. “That’s good enough for me.” With that, she turns toward the broken window. “I’ll get this replaced for you.”

“Octavia?”

The girl stops, one boot already hefted up on the window frame, and turns back.

“How do you know him?” Clarke has never asked more questions in his presence.

“He’s my big brother,” Octavia says. And then she drops out of sight.

 

He dreams about nonsense things.

Sand, cold water, Octavia biting him, his mother laughing, blonde hair, blood on his hands, a tall shadow, a name. He keeps waking up, but it’s only for a few minutes each time, and he has trouble remembering them later.

He gets pieces: someone urging him to drink water, cool hands taking his temperature and measuring his pulse, stinging on his many, many wounds.

He should wake up. He should wake up. He should wake up.

He sleeps more.

 

Two days pass without a word from Octavia. Clarke has called in sick to work. She’s covered the gaping window with a sheet. She’s watched Jason sleep through the night, cataloguing his injuries and working her magic. It’ll be a while before the swelling in his face goes down enough so that he looks like himself. The news spits out the same stories: vigilante caught in a faceoff with the cops, cops get killed. A building goes up in flames on the eastern half of the city. The vigilante set it. There are two condemners for every character witness.

On the second day, she gets up, makes coffee, checks on Jason, and starts eating before she realizes her window’s been replaced. Jason talks in his sleep, and sometimes wakes up. She commits everything he says to memory.

On the third day, she finds a stranger standing over him.

“Hi,” says the guy. He’s taller than Clarke, dark-skinned and pleasant-faced, completely unbothered by the knife in her hand. “I’m Miller. Octavia sent me over.”

Clarke stares at him blankly.

“You must be the famous Clarke Griffin,” the new guy says.

She’s too tired to question it. She makes him a cup of coffee. He’s friendly enough—cordial, funny, very disarming—but he’s just as guarded as Octavia and her brother.

“Who did this to him?” Clarke asks him.

His face grows grave. “You shouldn’t ask questions,” he tells her.

Her grip tightens around her cup. “Fuck you,” she snaps back. “He crashes into my life, threatens my career, takes over my apartment—I get to ask some questions.”

“Yes,” Miller agrees, completely calm. This bothers her. She wants to punch him. He gives her a wary smile. “But you shouldn’t ask them.”

After a few tries of talking to Jason, who is too sedated to make much sense, Miller takes off, leaving Clarke with his number and Octavia’s (“ _Only_ for emergencies.”). She resumes babysitting.

 

When he wakes up for the last time, he can’t decide if he’s in heaven or in hell.

It sure looks a lot like Clarke Griffin’s apartment, so it must be hell.

“Welcome back,” says the woman herself. She holds out a steaming mug, which he takes gingerly in his hands.

“How many days has it been?” He knows it’s been more than one from the tension in his muscles and bones, the crick in his neck. His voice comes out scraped and hoarse.

“Three,” she answers. She leans forward to touch him, and he jerks back. She presses her lips together. “I’ve saved your life several times,” she informs him. “There’s no need to be shy.”

But when she reaches for him again he stands up, wobbly and pained on his feet. “I’m fine,” he says irritably. “Where’s Mimic?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke says. “Your sister’s really good at disappearing.”

He goes rigid. How much did Octavia tell her? Judging from Clarke’s calmness, far too much. He hates not being in control.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Clarke asks. The air smells like her, like her shampoo and her detergent. It makes his head swim.

“No.” He puts down the mug instead of drinking from it. “Where are my clothes?”

“Octavia burned them,” she replies. “Miller brought over more.”

He closes his eyes. His friends are traitors. The absolute last thing he wanted was for Clarke to get more involved than she was—telling Octavia about her was just a courtesy, not an option. This wasn’t—this wasn’t supposed to _happen._

“I have to go,” he says abruptly. He turns for the door, much preferring an elevator to the fire escape. His body complains.

Clarke jumps up to block his way. “Hey, you’re not going anywhere,” she says. “You’re still healing. You’re doing better than I thought, but you’re still in shitty shape.”

“Boo-hoo,” he says coldly. He tries to skirt her, but she’s quicker than him right now.

“Why won’t you tell me anything?” she asks. “What are you afraid of?”

“Clarke—”

“Who did this to you?” she demands. “Why is the news calling you a terrorist? Did you kill those cops?”

 _“Stop,”_ he snarls. “If you want to live, stop _right now_. This isn’t a fucking joke, princess. I’m trying to protect you.”

“Who says I need protecting?” she shoots back. “Where did you come from? What’s your name? Who is Wallace?”

The name hits him like a slap. Clarke seems oblivious to this.

“Should I call my mom?” she continues. “She’s got friends in D.C. Would they know who that is?” She starts—all too quickly—for the phone.

In a panic he grabs her, his bare hand circling around her elbow. _“Don’t ask me about him ever again,”_ he hisses.

He realizes, too late, what he’s done. He watches the change go over her, the same horrible way. A dazed look comes over her face. Her pupils contract. She blinks once, twice. She smiles. “I won’t ask you about him ever again,” she says.

He lets go of her like she burned him, his face contracting in horror. “Shit,” he breathes. “I didn’t mean—oh, _shit_.” This time he places his hands on either side of her face, drawing her close to examine her pupils. “Clarke,” he says. “You can ask me about anything you want, okay? _Whenever you want_.”

“Whenever I want,” she repeats. Her eyes are blue. The trance lifts. She jerks out of his touch, stumbles backwards. “What the _fuck._ ”

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. He clenches his hands, unclenches them. “You took my gloves off. I don’t—I don’t touch people normally.”

He must have said it in his sleep. There is no way—no _fucking_ way—that Octavia or Miller told her on their own. There is no other way she could have learned that name. He curses himself.

“He’s the thing we’re all trying to survive,” Bellamy says lamely. “He’s what I’m trying to save everyone from.” He stops. “You can’t say that name on the streets, Clarke. Please, please forget that name.”

Silence pulses. For the first time since they met all that time ago, Clarke looks vulnerable. Maybe even afraid. “Don’t _ever_ do that again,” she tells him, and her voice is strong where the rest of her—her hunched shoulders, shaking hands tucked under her arms, uneasy steps backwards—is not. “Ever.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He walks out, takes every unstable bone and stab of pain as admonishment he probably deserves.

 

Clarke cannot forget the name Wallace.

She goes back to work shaken and uneasy, blows off drinks with her coworkers and forgets to smile at patients. She gets into the routine of faking it after a stern talking-to from her superiors. She does some research on her own.

 _Wallace,_ she tells Google.

 _William?_ Google replies. _Or George? Restaurant in Culver City? The song by Azaelia Banks?_

She clicks on _News._

 _Weather Enterprises,_ Google tells her. _CEO Dante Wallace endeavors to keep city clean after rash of vigilante attacks…_

She reads until her eyes hurt and her brain is heavy with information. She falls asleep on the couch. When her alarm wakes her up a Post-It waits for her on the glossy surface of the fridge.

_They’re watching. Don’t be stupid. –O_

She crumples it up and throws it in the trash.

Octavia herself shows up the next day, Miller at her heels. They have the grace to knock, but that’s all. Miller pushes past Clarke straight to her bedroom and Octavia says, “You’re coming with us.”

“What are you talking about?” Clarke follows Miller, tries to stop him when he starts throwing things into a large duffel. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s not safe for you here anymore,” Miller says. “We’ve got to move you.” He pulls a t-shirt and jeans from her dresser and holds them up. “Good?”

“Fine,” Octavia says.

“What—” Clarke starts, but shuts up when Miller _changes._ A split second later, she’s looking at herself. Her jaw drops.

“I love that look,” the other Clarke says, rather smugly.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Shut up and change, decoy.”

Two duffel bags. Two cars. Two Clarkes. Miller heads down towards the front door, Clarke’s sunglasses on his nose. Octavia stuffs a hood over Clarke’s head and shoves her towards the back stairs.

“Did he tell you to do this?” Clarke grumbles.

Octavia doesn’t reply.

They set her up in a musty old rented apartment. They tell her she’s allowed to go to work, but that’s all. It doesn’t matter much; Clarke’s still furious.

Three days later, a black van pulls up to the curb just as she’s getting home and pulls her in.

 

When they tell him, Bellamy kicks a trash can clear across the room.

“Productive,” Octavia remarks, but he can tell she’s worried. Her eyebrows are shoved together, her mouth tight.

Miller gives her a _look_. He has always known when to keep quiet.

Bellamy wants to kill Dante Wallace. It’s a thought he’s had before, but never with so much conviction. He wants to kill Dante Wallace. Not for Clarke—for everything. He breathes.

From the corner Maya watches him with large eyes. She looks smaller surrounded by them. She is, essentially, just another person they’ve put in danger, super or not. Bellamy wishes he didn’t have to ask her to become a traitor. She probably wishes at the same time that she hadn’t had to save his life. “What do we do?” she asks quietly.

Bellamy does not reply, _Kill Dante Wallace._ Instead he says, “We go get her.”

That it’s a classic, age-old showdown is not lost on Bellamy. All the codes and maps Maya gave them work, of course. (He leaves her at the office with a 9-millimeter and a promise. He won’t have her hurt.) Cold rooftop, breath frosting in the air, damsel in distress, faceless villains. None of it—not their powers, not their weapons, not any of the favors they called in—stops Clarke from getting a bullet to the brainpan.

It’s over in a second.

He’s _inches away,_ only three men standing between them.

“Stop!” yells the man in black. Maya named him Lovegood. He’s got a cruel face, is comically older than the woman he’s pointing a gun at. “Stop, or I kill her.”

Bellamy freezes. They all freeze. It’s Clarke that moves—and he’ll think later about how she wasn’t crying, how she wasn’t scared at all—reaching up for the gun, and it goes off.

Octavia shouts. Bellamy is moving before he can think, reaching not for Clarke but for Lovegood. He slams him against the ground, punches him until his face is a gory mess of blood and bone.

“Bellamy!” Octavia yells.

“Is she dead?” he calls back. He’s got a knee on Lovegood’s sternum and another dozen punches to throw. The silence is enough of an answer to keep going. The cold fury seizing his brain is not unlike the one he felt standing over his mother’s coffin, the one he felt finding his sister’s empty room. It scares him, but not enough.

“Where is he?” he screams. When the man laughs, he rips off his gloves and digs his fingers into his bloody skin. _“Where is Wallace?”_

Lovegood gasps. He replies, “Which one?”

That stops all three of them. Bellamy is panting, cold air scraping his throat. Octavia murmurs something just out of his earshot.

 _“Tell me everything,”_ Bellamy says.

The three of them stand there in the cold, among a mass of bodies, listening while Lovegood tells Bellamy every piece of information he knows through cracked teeth and split lips. Not one Wallace but two. Not a father and son but a puppet and a puppeteer. Not a monarchy but a coup.

“I should kill him,” Bellamy says when he’s finished. He still has his hands on Lovegood’s face. He could tell him to jump off the roof. He could tell him to go home and walk in front of a car. He could—

“Don’t.”

He doesn’t register that it’s not Octavia or Miller talking until the girl with the bullet in her brain sits up. A smashed piece of metal falls from her forehead. They all watch in shock as the wound closes up.

“We’ll need him,” she says.

Bellamy abandons Lovegood and grabs Clarke’s chin. She doesn’t shy away from his bloody hands. She doesn’t seem any different, except for the blood staining her teeth.

“How?” Octavia asks flatly. She’s gripping her gun like she’s unsure whether or not she’s living in a zombie apocalypse all of a sudden.

Clarke says, “I can’t die.”

 

Octavia and Miller pack Lovegood into the trunk of the car and take him away. Octavia stares wide-eyed at him and touches his wrist in a sign of comfort before she goes. Bellamy takes Clarke home, her hand clamped firmly in his.

“Bellamy,” he says.

Clarke stops rubbing her forehead to blink at him. ( _It doesn’t hurt,_ she’d said on the way over. _Nothing hurts me._ Judging from her tone, that wasn’t quite true. Something drives her to transfuse her own blood with her patients' to save them. He'd bet it's guilt.) Dried blood marks her face all the way down to her chin. Under the fluorescent lights of the elevator, she looks much less angelic than usual. “What?”

“My name,” he tells her. “It’s Bellamy.”

She doesn’t smile, not really. The corners of her mouth turn up just a degree. She says, “Nice to meet you.”

It’s the first time he enters her apartment via the door. Her bed is softer than he thought it would be.

(So is she.)

 

It’s 7 AM when his sister rouses them with a “Get up, you stinking lovebirds.”

They shuffle into the living room. It’s crowded with more people than Bellamy generally sees at seven in the morning. Maya perches at the furthermost corner of the couch looking mousey next to the hulking Lincoln, Octavia’s Chicago super (among other things). Monty, Miller’s new boyfriend, sits on the other end fiddling with the electronic waves only he can see. Raven’s got the last seat in the house and occupies it irritably.

Clarke grumbles, “Stop breaking into my apartment.” But she doesn’t complain further after Miller hands her coffee. She stands next to Bellamy where he’s leaning against the wall, rests a hand on his thigh.

“Where’s Lovegood?” Bellamy asks.

Miller glances at Maya before answering. “Someplace secure.”

Octavia dumps a box of papers onto the coffee table. “This is everything we could dig up,” she says. “Cage Wallace, thirty-five years old, graduate of Wharton, evil mastermind extraordinaire.”

“Don’t forget billionaire,” Raven mutters.

“Right,” says Bellamy. He stands up, unfolds his arms. “We’ve got work to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Believe me, if anyone's bummed that Raven didn't get a bigger, better role in this, it's me. This was supposed to be really quick, though, so I didn't have time. Here's your handy little index:
> 
> BB/Silvertongue/verbal manipulation  
> CG/none/healing (transferable by blood)  
> OB/Mimic/adoptive muscle memory  
> L/The Hunter/unfailing accuracy  
> RR/none/affinity for tech  
> M/none/animal communication  
> MG/Shockwave (maybe)/ability to see & interact w electromag waves  
> NM/Chameleon/shapeshifting


End file.
